Sleeping Off the Pain
by That Girl55
Summary: Jacob and Scott go to Mexico alone, and Kate takes her SATs. AU oneshot.


**A/N - I didn't post this under my drabbles because this isn't KateXSeth, it's totally Kate-centric. Goes totally AU in that Kate didn't come along on the trip to Mexico.**

 **Songs used: You and I in Unison by La Dispute**

()()()

 _"Often later when I'm sleeping you show up in my dreams._

 _Just doing simple things, like buying groceries._

 _And when I wake up I could swear you must've just left me."_

()()()

Friday night Jacob Fuller can't sleep.

He's wide awake, his eyes open as he gets an idea. Not just any idea, he realizes, but a good idea. And that idea only grows as the night goes on.

The next morning, Kate and Scott Fuller are woken up by the horn from a Winnebago, which is sitting in front of their house.

Their dad's standing in the front room, a suitcase beside him, and he's telling them to pack all their clothes, all the important stuff. He's telling them they've got to be out of there before noon, and Kate doesn't have a second to process what's going on.

"Dad," She turns to him. "I can't go anywhere."

"What do you mean, Kate? This is a family trip, we're all going. You, me, and Scott, to Mexico." His eyes are wide, crazy, even.

Jacob has to get out of there soon, before one of the neighbors gets suspicious. He knows what he's doing is wrong, knows it goes against everything he's believed in, everything he's preached, but he's not about to let his kids get tossed into foster care and he doesn't want Kate and Scott seeing him tossed into jail, either.

He shivers at the thought, and he heads towards the kitchen for another beer. It's his second one this morning, but he doesn't tell the kids that.

"I have the SATs in two hours, Dad, I can't miss that."

And Jacob Fuller looks at the ground, at the bottle in his hands. Kate hasn't missed that, either, and she takes it from him, gives him a look like Jennifer would, and she shuts the fridge.

"Fine," Jacob swallows, hard, and he lets her stay home.

He's not planning to be gone forever, just a few months, just until this lawsuit blows over. Besides, Kate's almost eighteen, and she's a smart girl. Jacob convinces himself that she'll be better off here in Bethel for the next few months, and then he hugs her.

Then he and Scott walk out the door for the last time.

()()()

Jacob Fuller is gone two weeks when the cops show up, and they're the friendly neighborhood kind (thank God) so when they find out he's not there they don't ask anymore questions, and they leave Kate alone.

She tells them, hesitantly, that she hasn't heard from Scott or her dad since they left, and she looks sort of worried so they know she's telling the truth. They do their best to reassure her, telling her that Jacob was trying to hide, trying to avoid the court date, but she knows that's not all of it.

Something bad has happened in Mexico, and Kate isn't sure if she wants to know what.

()()()

They're gone when she celebrates her eighteenth birthday, three months later. Kyle throws her a surprise party and his mother makes her a homemade cake, just like her mom would've done had she still been alive.

She gets a diamond necklace from Kyle and a few little trinkets from his parents, her friends mostly give her gift cards and cash, knowing she needs them. It's not a happy birthday - the bills are piling up and that morning she's gotten an eviction notice on her door, so Kate knows it's time to go.

Kyle offers to have her stay with him, in the guest house, but she tells him thank you politely enough and scrounges enough cash for an apartment in town, one above a cafe. She works the graveyard shift there so the owner will give her a discount on the rent, and Kate's sure she's got everything figured out.

()()()

Kate hasn't heard from anyone in ten months, and she's pretty sure they've fallen off the face of the earth.

If she was a realist, she'd say they were dead, but her belief in God is fading and she doesn't know if her father belongs in heaven or hell, so she tries not to think about it. Instead, Kate thinks about her future.

College isn't an option now, there's just no money for that, so she thinks about pooling together enough cash to get an apartment in a state that's cheaper to live in than California and trading in her ancient Toyota for something more reliable to make the journey.

Nevada isn't far. Kate would make a good showgirl.

She can feel God frowning down upon her, but she questions if there's an eighteen year old girl in the world who hasn't had these thoughts. She's got the whole work around her, and she knows nothing of it, she's never explored, never traveled. Her family's dead and she's got no future - therefore she has no excuses not to live.

Kyle's breath is on her neck and his tongue is making circles on her collarbone. He's looking at her like she's some sort of goddess and, in this lightening, he looks like a snake, the way his arms hold her too tight, the way his fingers slide over her skin. He is all that is good and pure, Kate knows, but he's also an eighteen year old boy with feelings and urges and Kate is all too vunerable, all too ready to give in.

She wonders if Kyle knows that, too. If he's been waiting for the right moment to come at her, to convince her to take a bite of him.

()()()

Kyle is her downfall.

By her graduation day, she knows she is pregnant. She can feel it, this thing growing inside her, taking her over.

She wants to laugh, she wants to cry - how could she be so stupid?

Kate had plans, even if they weren't ideal. She was going to travel, going to see the world, and now she was stuck in Bethel, stuck with the job of growing something that she didn't think she wanted to keep.

Kyle was ecstatic - she should've known he'd be. His parents had him set for life, a tiny guest house out back for him and Kate, once they married, of course.

So Kate married him. Drunkenly, of course, at city hall on a Friday night while she munched on a saltine because it calmed her stomach. There was no bridesmaids, no groomsmen and no father daughter dance. Kate is dressed in a white sundress she got from Sears and Kyle's tux is the same one he wore to prom a few months ago. Kate is laughing but there's something in her eyes, something unsettling and unhappy.

Kyle is all smiles and marital bliss.

Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop buy Kate and Kyle a shiny Mercedes as a wedding present, and Kate sells her Toyota and keeps the money, she doesn't tell anyone. All of their friends seem to be happy for them, but all of their friends are leaving Bethel in a month or two, heading off to college or the military or to Hollywood. None of them guessed Kate would've been the teenage bride, but you couldn't be sure about any girl these days, Mrs. Winthrop assured them.

None of it mattered, because Kate had lost the baby within a week.

She left Kyle a note. She took the keys to his Chevy and left town, taking her chance while she had it.

The least she could do was leave him the Mercedes.

()()()

Kate is a terrible showgirl. It looks easy but she's so shy and the lights are bright and those shoes are hell to walk in. Still, it's an experience, and Kate can say she's done it.

She meets this boy Rafa while she's there, and he's the skinniest Mexican she's ever seen but somehow it works for him. She thinks he's cute but she doesn't say anything because that's the way of small town girls, and Rafa gives her work, a place to stay.

He runs a tattoo parlor, she makes appointments, cleans up after him.

They begin a kind of partnership that Kate's never known before. And they're not in love and they're not _not_ in love, but they're happy with what they have.

And they stay happy that way, Kate making breakfast and cleaning and making appointments and Rafa creating these magnificent pieces of artwork and sulking and bringing a different girl home every night.

The most intimate they've gotten is when Rafa did a tattoo for her, a long and thick cross on her forearm. She cried while he did it, the small Christian girl who wasn't used to pain, and he kissed away her tears as he finished. He turns to her then, and he gets this look in his eyes that she's never seen in anyone before, and it's so intense, so penetrating, that it feels wrong and she has to look away.

Then Rafa went out into the night, and she never saw him again.

Kate wondered what her parents would think, if they saw her now, this girl with dark hair and curious eyes who wears too much makeup and too little clothes, this girl with huge hoop earrings and a cross tattooed on her arm. She doubts their opinions would be good ones.

She doesn't think about them as much now. Memories of her parents haunted her all around Bethel - every time she turned a corner, she expected them to be there, waiting by the drugstore to pick up medication or walking into the church. In Las Vegas, she has no memories of them, and it makes it easier to forget.

She thinks about Scott a lot, though.

Some days she wishes she'd gone to Mexico with them, and other days she wishes she'd made Scott stay. In the end, she picks up and moves to Texas.

()()()

Two years down the line and Kate finds herself in Mexico.

It was a spontaneous idea, a trip for her and one of the girls she bartends with, Sierra, to learn about the drinks down there. As Sierra puts it, their boss wants them to make a better margarita.

Her heart twinges a little every time their destination is mentioned, but other than that Mexico is not a particularly long or bad drive, and border patrol was easy enough to get through.

All Kate can think about is her brother and father - what was the same for them, what wasn't. She questions if she should be here, if she should ask around about them while she's here, but in the end she settles down at a bar in the middle of nowhere and orders herself a tequila.

She looks around for Sierra, but she's noticed the girl is off in a corner booth, flirting with a man a few years older than them. She wants to scold the girl - Sierra is only eighteen, after all - but Kate remembers the year she turned eighteen, remembers that, technically, she's still legally married to Kyle, and she orders another drink.

Kate feels eyes on her, and she spins just in time to catch a glance of a Chinese man (or boy, maybe) walking past her. He looks familiar, but he's got a hood up and he's wearing sunglasses, and she's drunk enough that her only thought is "there's a Chinese man _here_?" And she wonders if she's said it out loud, because she earns a chuckle from a few of those around her.

In the end, she turns back to her drink, sloppily conversing with the bartender, questioning how to properly make one of these even though she's sure she won't remember the steps in the morning.

When she's ready to leave the bar she hunts down Sierra, keeping good on her promise about not letting her friend go home with anyone on the first night, and finds her easily.

She and the man are in the same spot she saw them at earlier, and Sierra looks disappointed that they haven't gone somewhere more private.

As Kate drags her friend away, the girl complains, her lip jutting out in a pout.

"I swear, he was into me before he went to the bathroom, but when he came back, all he wanted to talk about was you." She groaned. "Kate this and Kate that."

"How'd he know my name?"

"I probably mentioned it," Sierra shrugged. "I don't think I did, though."

Kate shivered, glancing back at the bar.

She needed to get the hell out of Mexico

()()()

 _"Everybody has to let go someday._

 _Everybody has to let go._

 _I wonder when I will._

 _I wonder."_

()()()

 **A/N- Had to include a little Rafa in there, because I don't feel he gets enough use as a character :(**

 **Anyways, in case it wasn't clear in the story, the Chinese boy in the bar was Scott, and he cornered Sierra's date in the bathroom and ate him, taking over his looks for the rest of the time in the bar, so he could find out more about Kate.**

 **This was just a drabble and kind of my thoughts on what could've happened if Kate had somehow gotten out of going to Mexico, so I hope you enjoyed! xx**


End file.
